Two Baltimore businessmen were indicted today for conspiring to rig bids at tax lien auctions in Maryland for more than five years. The one-count felony indictment filed today in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore alleges that Harvey M. Nusbaum and his business partner, Jack W. Stollof, participated in a conspiracy to rig bids in tax lien auctions conducted by the city of Baltimore and various counties in the state of Maryland beginning in or around the Spring of 2002 and continuing until at least Aug. 9, 2007.

"Giving ICE agents the authority to investigate drug trafficking cases, enhancing information sharing capabilities between ICE and the DEA, and ensuring full participation in intelligence centers will strengthen our efforts to combat international narcotics smuggling, streamline operations and bring better intelligence to our front line personnel."

A federal grand jury in the District of Hawaii has indicted Rodney D. King, 43, and Sharon-Mae Nishimura, 30, both of Honolulu, on multiple counts of federal sex trafficking of adult women and minor female victims.

Two U.S. military officials pleaded guilty to various bribery, fraud and conspiracy charges relating to Department of Defense (DOD) contracts in Afghanistan.

Five individuals pleaded guilty today in federal court in Detroit for their roles in a wide-ranging international stock fraud scheme involving the illegal use of bulk commercial e-mails, or "spamming."

The city of Duluth, Minn., and the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District have agreed to make improvements to the area’s sewer system, estimated to cost about $130 million, to eliminate sanitary sewer overflows in an agreement filed today in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, Minn.

“As demonstrated by today’s charges and arrests, we will strike back against those whose fraudulent schemes not only undermine a program upon which 45 million aged and disabled Americans depend, but which also contribute directly to rising health care costs that all Americans must bear,” said Attorney General Holder.

There is no tension between a sentencing scheme that is effective and fair and one that is tough and equitable. We must work toward these twin goals and we must do so now.

The co-owner of a Martinsville, N.J., landscaping company pleaded guilty to participating in a fraud conspiracy at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-designated Superfund site, Federal Creosote, located in Manville, N.J. Frederick Landgraber pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey today to one count of conspiracy to defraud the EPA from approximately March 2002 until approximately June 2005 at the Federal Creosote site.

The Department announced a simultaneous lawsuit and settlement with the state of Texas concerning the care given to residents of the state’s 13 facilities for persons with developmental disabilities. Along with the settlement agreement, the Department will file a complaint initiating a lawsuit against the state in federal court. An independent monitor will be appointed to oversee the state’s compliance with the settlement agreement and the court will retain ultimate jurisdiction.

A former Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) social work associate was sentenced to three years in prison for her role in a scheme to defraud the United States of her honest services in connection with her work finding suitable housing and daily care for mentally ill and disabled military veterans and then obstructing the VA’s investigation into the fraudulent scheme.

The chief executive officer of a former Virginia marine products company pleaded guilty and has agreed to pay a $100,000 criminal fine and serve time in jail for his role in a conspiracy to rig bids and allocate customers with respect to marine products purchased by the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other public and private entities.

Additional charges and defendants have been added to a federal case arising from the abduction of a boy from his Las Vegas home in October 2008.

Arthur Sease IV, a former Memphis Police Department officer, was sentenced today to a prison term of life plus 255 years by Chief Judge Jon P. McCalla in Memphis, Tenn. A jury convicted Sease in February 2009 of 44 counts of civil rights, narcotics, robbery, and firearms offenses.

A retired U.S. military official pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges relating to Department of Defense (DOD) contracts in Afghanistan. According to the plea agreement, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago today, First Lieutenant Robert Moore (Ret.) pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bribery charges.

Beazer Homes USA Inc. has agreed to pay the United States $5 million dollars, plus contingent payments of up to $48 million dollars to be shared with victimized private homeowners, to resolve allegations that it, and Beazer Mortgage Corp., were involved in fraudulent mortgage origination activities in connection with federally insured mortgages.

A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted a physician assistant late yesterday for his role in a $7.7 million Medicare fraud scheme.

The United States has joined a whistleblower suit against Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC); Applied Enterprise Solutions (AES); Dale Galloway, Chief Executive Officer of AES; Stephen Adamec, former Director of the Naval Oceanographic Major Shared Resource Center (NAVO MSRC) at the Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi; and Robert Knesel, Deputy Director of NAVO MSRC.

A federal judge in Tampa, Fla., has permanently barred eight men – including five tax preparers and two Certified Public Accountants (CPA) – from promoting an alleged tax fraud scheme involving bogus income tax credits.

As part of a multi-site settlement, G-I Holdings Inc. has agreed to address asbestos contamination caused by its past operation of the largest chrysotile asbestos mine and mill in the country. The 1,673-acre abandoned mine site in Vermont, known as the Vermont Asbestos Group Mine Site (VAG Site) is the most significant of the contaminated sites covered by the settlement, which includes 12 other industrial sites across the country where G-I may have disposed of hazardous waste.

Joseph McNealy, a former Jackson, Miss., computer systems administrator, was sentenced today to 70 months in prison for receiving and possessing images of child pornography.

A former executive of Bennett Environmental Inc. (BEI), a Canadian-based company that treats and disposes of contaminated soil, pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to pay kickbacks and commit fraud at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-designated Superfund site, Federal Creosote, located in Manville, N.J. The former executive also pleaded guilty to participating in a money laundering conspiracy and impeding a proceeding before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

An individual pleaded guilty today in federal court in Detroit for his role in creating and marketing software designed and used to send bulk commercial e-mails, known as "spam," in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Brenda Stevenson, an officer with the city of Highland Park, Mich., Police Department, was indicted today by a federal grand jury in Detroit on charges of using unlawful and excessive force and making a false statement to an FBI agent.

Everett Cooney waived indictment and pleaded guilty in court in Little Rock, Ark., to a federal charge of sex trafficking an underage female. Chief U.S. District Judge J. Leon Holmes accepted Cooney’s guilty plea.

The Department of Justice, UBS and the Swiss government have requested a stay with a rescheduled hearing date of Aug. 3, 2009, in the proceedings for enforcement of the summons ordering UBS to turn over records of account holders.

An employee of a Sewell, N.J., sub-contractor that provided temporary electrical services was sentenced today to serve 20 months in jail for his role in a kickback and fraud scheme at an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-designated Superfund site in New Jersey. The sub-contractor was also ordered to pay $154,597 in restitution to the EPA, jointly and severally with his co-conspirators.

George Michael Lee, Duc Cong Nguyen, Hop Nguyen and Tien Duc Vu were sentenced today in San Diego for their roles in a scheme by the "Tran Organization" to cheat casinos across the United States and Canada.

A Greek citizen, Panagiotis Lekkas, the captain of the bulk cargo ship the M/V Theotokos, pleaded guilty today to four felony counts in federal court in New Orleans for violating anti-pollution laws, ship safety laws and obstructing a U.S. Coast Guard investigation.

The Department released a new technical assistance fact sheet on legal requirements relating to admitting individuals with HIV or AIDS to occupational training schools and granting state licensure in occupations such as barbering, massage therapy and home health care assistance.

Panagiotis Stamatakis, the chief engineer on the Cyprus-flagged M/V Myron N, and the second engineer, Dimitrios Papadakis, both citizens of Greece, pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Trenton, N.J., to using falsified records that concealed improper discharges of untreated bilge waste from the cargo ship.

A Georgia temporary staffing company and its owner/president have agreed to plead guilty to making a false statement to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Patriot Services Inc. and its owner/president, Stephanie Blackmon, have each agreed to plead guilty to a one-count charge of making a false statement to the SBA, which was filed today in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan.

Carl Courtright III, of Granite City, Ill., was sentenced today to life plus 10 years in prison for production of child pornography and other offenses.  A federal jury convicted Courtright of one count of production of child pornography, two counts of possession of child pornography, one count of receipt of child pornography and one count of bank fraud following a five-day trial in March 2009.

Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden today announced plans by the Department of Justice to significantly expand its training and education operations at the National Advocacy Center (NAC), the core training facility for local, state and federal attorneys, law enforcement agents and support personnel.

The state of New York and New York City have agreed to pay $540 million to settle allegations that they knowingly submitted, or caused to be submitted, false claims for reimbursement for school-based health care services, primarily speech therapy and transportation, provided to Medicaid eligible children from 1990 to 2001. The settlement is a record federal recovery by the Justice Department for the Medicaid Program.

Antonio McWherter, a police officer in the East St. Louis, Ill., Police Department, was charged today in a two-count federal indictment stemming from a January 2006 incident in which the officer allegedly punched a handcuffed arrestee in the mouth. The indictment charges McWherter with a felony civil rights violation and with making false statements to the FBI.

"The Asset Forfeiture Program is critical to our efforts to reduce and deter criminal activity. Your use of civil and criminal forfeiture to seize and forfeit the assets of organized crime targets is essential for this fight."

William Travis Brown, 39, of Sellersburg, Ind., was convicted today by a federal jury in Indianapolis of transporting and possessing child pornography. Brown was charged on July 8, 2009, in an amended indictment with one count of transportation and one count of possession of child pornography.

A federal grand jury in Casper, Wyo., Thursday returned an indictment charging Randy Lee (a/k/a Jimmy Lee) and Jay Lee (a/k/a John Marks, a/k/a Anthony Romero) of Cheyenne, Wyo., with odometer tampering, title fraud, securities fraud, mail fraud and conspiracy to commit these offenses. The indictment alleges that the defendants worked as used car dealers at Lee’s RV’s, Inc., a dealership in Cheyenne.

A father and son pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md., to illegally over fishing striped bass, also known as rockfish, from 2003 through 2006.

Mark Edwin Cairnes, 51, of Jonestown, Texas, has been charged with advertising, receiving and possessing child pornography. A grand jury in the Western District of Texas returned the indictment against Cairnes on July 21, 2009, which was unsealed today after his arrest yesterday in Jonestown.

Fourteen members of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club have pleaded guilty in Detroit to charges including violent crimes in aid of racketeering, illegal drug distribution and firearms violations.

Control Components Inc. (CCI), a Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif.-based company, pleaded guilty today to violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the Travel Act in a decade-long scheme to secure contracts in approximately 36 countries by paying bribes to officials and employees of various foreign state-owned companies as well as foreign and domestic private companies.

A Canadian citizen has been charged in an indictment unsealed yesterday for his alleged participation in an eight-year conspiracy to defraud the United Nations Oil for Food Program (OFFP) and to bribe Iraqi government officials in connection with the sale of a chemical additive used in the refining of leaded fuel.

Paul Revere Transportation LLC, a bus company based in Boston, has agreed to pay a $650,000 civil penalty after being found liable by a jury in June for violating federal and state clean air laws for idling their buses for extended periods of time. The company was found liable on June 8, 2009, after a six-day trial in U.S. District Court in Boston, for 234 separate violations of the Clean Air Act and a Massachusetts anti-idling regulation.

"People who actually work in law enforcement, and people who actually work in our nation’s schools, know that our jobs are closely interwoven. When their neighborhoods and homes don’t feel safe, our children have a tough time paying attention in school. And when our children are not engaged at school, they’re going to be much more likely to get into trouble outside of it."

The United States has filed a lawsuit to bar a married couple’s alleged nationwide tax fraud scheme involving so-called asset protection.

A New Jersey accountant pleaded guilty today to laundering portions of more than $300,000 stolen from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in the Republic of Iraq and brought back to the United States by his wife, a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel.

A federal jury today convicted former United States Congressman William J. Jefferson, 62, of New Orleans, La., of using his office to corruptly solicit bribes.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) signed two Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009, to foster increased communication between participating agencies at the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) Fusion Center and the International Organized Crime Intelligence and Operations Center (IOC-2).